


the woods lovely, dark and deep

by sweetsinnerchild



Category: Naruto
Genre: Background Character Death, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-02-01 02:56:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21346333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetsinnerchild/pseuds/sweetsinnerchild
Summary: But across all the tales this remained the same: an unlucky traveler, the monster, and trees that would pull apart and twist together behind the monster as it hunted.  The frantic crunching of the leaves beneath a hasty foot, the desperate foray through the thorny branches. Its prey at the end of the trail: exhausted, wounded, trapped.And with a final rustle of leaves, the screams would stop.The tailed beasts were real; monsters were not. Or so Iruka thought.
Relationships: Umino Iruka/Yamato | Tenzou
Comments: 25
Kudos: 50





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i wanted to write something for halloween, and then i deleted the entire thing and rewrote it, and then my writing roll guttered out before i could get to the noncon.
> 
> also gotta love how im adding almost noncon to a rarepair - fulfilling incredibly niche demands, that's me, babe!
> 
> warnings for horror. and plants.

There was a monster in the woods.

Not the ring of maple surrounding Konoha, lush green during the spring and fiery red in the fall; not the towering cedar spread throughout the Land of Fire, tall and proud and old. The woods the stories told of were deeper, darker, hidden. The protective bulk of the trunks twisted together into claustrophobic closeness; the branches, elsewhere spread wide and inviting, in there reaching, clawing, grabbing.

In those woods lived a monster, lurking between the trees. In some stories the trees loved the monster to do as it said. In others, the trees feared the monster far too much to disobey. 

But across all the tales this remained the same: an unlucky traveler, the monster, and trees that would pull apart and twist together behind the monster as it hunted. The frantic crunching of the leaves beneath a hasty foot, the desperate foray through the thorny branches. Its prey at the end of the trail: exhausted, wounded, trapped.

And with a final rustle of leaves, the screams would stop.

A story told over a campfire, an excuse to cling to his parents and demand their presence as he slept. That was all the monster ever was to Iruka, before he had seen what a monster was for himself: the scorching heat of the Kyuubi's flames as it scoured across his face, its tails blotting out the sky, drifting embers where there had been stars.

And sometimes, when he was far too exhausted to know better - a little boy with bright blue eyes.

But there was no smoke without a fire - no story without a source. And Iruka should have remembered that before he plunged into the woods in an attempt to escape the two missing-nin chasing after him, before he found Tenzou wandering alone in the woods, presumably lost.

Tenzou stood across him now, his head cocked to the side in clear curiosity. And Iruka wondered how he could have ever mistaken the blank look in his eyes for humanity, the attempts at mimicking emotion for shyness or shock. The lean lines of his form for a civilian.

What a joke - and Iruka was the punchline.

“What are you waiting for,” he demanded - and how Iruka hated the way his voice turned rough and desperate - an animal with its leg caught in a snare. It was apt, with the brambles and their thorns tugging against his skin as he shifted within their grasp. “Kill me.”

Kill him, like how Tenzou had killed Iruka’s two pursuers - the first in what Iruka thought was just a plant, if only shaped unusually like an urn. She had thought the wide rim of the lip was a safe place to land in their skirmish within the woods. But her foot slipped and she toppled through the opening and into the liquid below.

Iruka could only watch in horror as she struggled within the sticky heaviness of the liquid, as it hampered all her attempts to climb out of the plant. As her repeated efforts at jutsus failed over and over again, her chakra flaring and faltering away.

It ended when she sank further down into the liquid - nectar, Iruka later realised, the sweet scent permeating through the air - too exhausted to fight, drowning in honey gold.

The other missing-nin died after Iruka met Tenzou - and how laughably protective Iruka was of him then, before he knew what he was. The missing-nin had lunged towards them, and Iruka immediately pulled Tenzou to his chest and out of the way. He remembered Tenzou staring at him then, his face slack with surprise. Iruka just self-assuredly assumed it was awe at his shinobi reflexes.

If only he had been slower to react. If only the kunai had scored across Tenzou’s throat then, and revealed the white sap that would have bled from the gash. If only.

The trajectory of that lunge hurled the missing-nin into another leaf - one Iruka had been looking at moments earlier, the gloss of its surface wet and dripping. He had almost touched it even, curiosity overcoming his wariness for one moment.

It was only later he remembered Tenzou’s eyes then, his laser focus on Iruka's hand.

Would Tenzou have pushed him into the leaf, had the missing-nin not attacked them? Left Iruka to gasp into the wet surface as he was immobilised, to asphyxiate when the leaf rolled shut as it did onto the missing-nin. Was that his plan then, in that hungry gleam of his eyes?

Iruka wouldn’t know - would never know.

“You caught me, it’s over.” He kept on talking - one final act of defiance before he died. Defiance was all he had left when he promised himself to keep fighting, to live. “You’ve had your fun."

Only days ago since he first made that promise - as the trees and the leaves all shook around him, sending terror caterwauling through his every nerves. (Iruka would later know it as Tenzou’s first attempt on his life.) He had almost given up then, as that wide-eyed child that had reveled in the fears of his peers as but could not face his own.

A quick death, he thought in his despair, was kinder than a prolonged chase.

But Naruto's face flashed in front of him, then. Iruka would have thought that impending death would herald images of saddened faces, perhaps a few tears - but instead he saw Naruto’s face: brows scrunched in concentration, scooping up the last of his noodles even as a single strand hung limply out the side of his mouth.

Of Naruto being irrepressibly, undeniably, happy.

It was ridiculous - Iruka wasn’t the boy’s caretaker. He wasn’t anything, just his teacher, and sometimes a person who woke up shivering from nightmares of what was contained within. But even so Iruka knew that the whole village loathed the boy, and even if the Hokage did not he was far too busy to care for him.

To think that if he died then. Naruto would… he would go on. He’d eat at Ichiraku. But would he be happy? Iruka couldn’t find it in himself to answer that he would.

So, no. Iruka couldn't die. If he was unwilling to let a couple of missing-nin kill him, a monster couldn’t have him either. 

But now that the monster had him in his grasp, why wasn’t it doing anything?

“Fucking kill me already!” Iruka snarled.

Instead of raising the bramble and letting the thorns dig into Iruka’s flesh, letting it drag a hole wide open in the soft skin of Iruka’s throat - Tenzou stepped closer, his face still disquietingly intent. And, Iruka thought, still hungry.

“You’re so… interesting,” he finally said. “Most of your lot just scream and scream… but you talk.”

“You tricked me,” Iruka bit out. “You pretended you’re a human, of course I’d talk to you.”

He had talked to Tenzou and Tenzou had talked back, as Iruka led them through the forest and carved symbols and directions onto the trees. As Tenzou shifted the trees and grew bark over the symbols again and again, leading Iruka in an unceasing spiral.

And over the days he had gotten more tactile - curling an arm into Iruka’s own, leaning into Iruka’s space. Twisting and combing his fingers through Iruka’s hair as he woke up. And Iruka had been too far indulgent, dismissing it as a civilian’s need for reassurance, reasoning that comfort for a shaken civilian was one more service he could provide as a shinobi.

It only took Tenzou becoming bolder, grabbing Iruka from behind. Iruka had reacted on reflex: the kunai, always in his hand from that first day - he spun around and stopped short of driving it into Tenzou’s face.

Its sharp point scratched the skin of Tenzou’s cheek, and the white sap that oozed out before the injury sealed itself away was the resounding toll of a warning bell that Tenzou was not what Iruka thought he was.

To which Tenzou had only raised a hand to touch at that injury that was no more. To which he said, even delightedly, “this is the part where you run.”

And run Iruka did - straight and straight and straight, desperate for an end to these woods. Surely it had to end somewhere - where the trees reached up towards the sun instead of after him, where the vines draped themselves across branches instead of lashing out towards his ankles and curling around his wrists.

He ran on as the light through the foliage slanted eastwards, as the shadows grew longer and darker and deep - ran all the way to that path into the woods he first saw in his desperate flight from the two missing-nin. Instead of leading out, it led him to a wall of brambles - far too tall and too widespread to have grown naturally over the course of days.

And Iruka, with a kunai in his hand and a monster on his tail, had chosen to forge forward, to hack through the thorns instead of turning around and facing his death.

A foolish effort, a futile attempt. In a dash of cruelty, Tenzou had let him through almost the entire way, where Iruka could see through the gaps the main road and the carts of the merchants passing by, had let him almost think he’d won - before the brambles shifted and curled around Iruka and dragged him screaming back into the forest. Away from freedom.

And now here they were, with Tenzou brushing a thumb lightly across Iruka’s cheek.

“I’ve never been saved before,” he murmured. “How novel. I was going to kill you, and then you saved me.”

“I should have let you die then,” Iruka sneered, pressing away from Tenzou’s hand. The thorns dug deeper into his back and wrists. “If I’d known - I’d have let you die."

“But you didn’t.” And Tenzou's hand, deceptively soft, cupped Iruka’s cheek. “You saved me,” he repeated, right as he leant in and covered Iruka’s lips with his own.

Iruka froze. He had expected death, not the monster in the shape of a man kissing him, slipping a tongue inside his mouth. And he would have stayed frozen if not for how the tongue brushed back of his teeth and further in, across the cavern of his mouth and further in, down his throat and _further in_ -

His gag reflex kicked in then - he choked, pushing and straining against that intrusive thing that pretended at being a tongue. He wanted it out, he needed it out - in pure desperation, he bit down.

But instead of retracting, liquid flooded his mouth: thick, syrupy and bland.

Sap. It was sap. He was going to drown with a tongue down his throat and sap in his lungs - he was going to die like that missing-nin, choking to death on nectar -

Tenzou drew back, and the tongue withdrew with him. Iruka could only gasp for breath and spit out mouthfuls of white globs, sap mixed with saliva, after.

“What the fuck,” he said, his voice coarse. “What the _fuck_ \- “

“I was thanking you,” Tenzou said, nonplussed. The thorns had scratched Iruka’s cheek open again in his struggle; Tenzou delicately licked the gathering blood off Iruka's skin. “You humans do this to thank each other, don’t you?”

Iruka made a strangled noise as the reality hit him: Tenzou had probably witnessed adrenaline-fuelled kisses on the grounds of the forest, as his preys ran from him. A near-death experience jolted the libido for some.

In retrospect - was that what Tenzou was trying to do all this time?

“If you want to thank me,” Iruka said, his words leaving him in a rush. “You’d let me go.”

For a moment Tenzou looked down at Iruka, and Iruka thought that maybe, just maybe, he was considering it. That he would unwind the brambles from Iruka’s shoulders and let Iruka go, that a monster might know of human compassion and act it out.

But Tenzou looked down at Iruka, and decided mercilessly, pitilessly, “no.”

His hand brushed at the strands of Iruka’s hair that had been pulled out by his struggle through the brambles. A mockery of affection.

“I want to consume you,” he whispered. Like a confession; like damnation. “I’ve tasted the hunt and I’ve tasted your blood - I want you. I want all of you.”

His finger traced over Iruka’s scar - and there was that sudden shock of sharpness, as blood began to run down his face from his scar open anew.

“I could eat you right now,” he mused. “You’ll nourish me well. Blood always does.” Tenzou kissed his cheek then, but Iruka could feel the press of that false tongue against his skin, lapping at the blood. 

“Do it,” Iruka challenged, as weak as his voice was. He would not beg - he _refused_ to. 

“But you’re so interesting,” Tenzou repeated against his cheek. If Iruka didn’t know better, there was affection in his voice. Maybe even fondness. “Talking all the time… You’re different. Special.”

He licked Iruka one final time, before murmuring, “I’ll just have to consume you slowly.”

And Iruka’s elevated heartbeat kicked itself into a staccato beat of terror. Images flashed across his mind: of Tenzou taking a bite out of him, of Tenzou leaving him to bleed. Blood trickling down his skin and dripping onto the hungry soil below.

“I’ll shade you,” Tenzou said over the rush of blood in Iruka’s ears. It almost sounded like reassurance. “I’ll give you water and give you food. And when you ripen I’ll take what I need.”

“Humans don’t work like that,” Iruka said, strained. Like his lungs were being squeezed, even though the brambles were not so tight as to strangle him. “I won't - I don’t ripen - I don’t work like that!”

There was a sound of disappointment, and Iruka waited for Tenzou to decide that Iruka was no longer interesting. But instead he shook his head - the sound of it like leaves rustling against leaves, as the forest too rustled around them.

“You do,” he said, certain. “You will.” His eyes darkened as he stared at Iruka’s face; as he licked his lips for the taste of blood. “I’ll show you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please applaud for cameos by carnivorous plants: the pitcher plant, and the sundew! let's hope they like their meal of missing-nin.
> 
> might add a second chapter one day, if i get around to writing it. not quite the finality i want yet, with what i've written so far.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more chapter, i said as i plan for more chapters
> 
> guess i'm weak to horror

Tenzou kept his promises. 

_I'll shade you_, he said, and brought Iruka deeper into the woods. For every step he took, the brambles holding Iruka captive dragged itself after him like a faithful hound; at every step Iruka struggled, kicking and clawing to no avail. 

Behind them, the wall of brambles receded into the distance and behind the cover of the trees. For all of its false promises, Iruka could not bear it gone from his sight. 

Where was Tenzou bringing him? Perhaps a cave, with plenty of shadows to fulfill his promise. Or his lair - surely a monster would have a lair - a place to call safe and to rest, to prefer and call home. 

_A place to keep his food_, his mind whispered and conjured up silhouettes of bodies hanging from the trees, swaying in a non-existent breeze. The steady _drip-drip-drip_ of blood down onto the dark soil. _A place to keep_ _you._

To hang from a tree with the solid ground far beneath his feet, to weaken as blood drained out of his body -

Iruka renewed his struggle against the brambles, even if in vain.

It was a surprise then that they emerged from the claustrophobic darkness of the woods and into a glade. The trees gathered less jealously here, allowing the gentle rays of sunlight to slip through their branches. For this concession, the grass flourished wild and verdant as it thrived under the sun. A slight breeze swept by, trailing cool fingers across Iruka's skin before darting into the forest, never to be felt again.

Picturesque. Serene. Beautiful. Iruka might have brought his students here to run and play, the soft give of dirt and grass beneath his feet to cushion their inevitable falls and tumbles. He might have made his camp on his way back to Konoha, stared up at the night sky in awe and humble gratitude for the beauty of nature. 

Might have, could have, would have. The brambles shifted around him, curling up against him rather like an affectionate cat - one made entirely out of thorns and deeply unwanted.

It acted as a good reminder that he knew better now. 

_I’ll give you water_, Tenzou had promised next, and Iruka saw for himself another display of Tenzou’s strange powers. In the corner of the glade the grass _moved_, clearing an empty space of loamy soil. In that empty patch of dirt out grew a plant - from tiny bud to shooting stalk to a bulbous and wide-lipped receptacle - it took mere seconds.

It took Iruka a second more to remember that first unassuming plant. That urn filled with golden nectar and a sweetened death. 

It was large enough to fit a person. It was large enough to fit him. He remembered the missing-nin, sinking into the depths of the urn and out of sight. If he went back there and cut open the urn, would her nectar-soaked corpse still be there?

For all of his fears, Tenzou did not toss him into the pitcher. Iruka would know later that it was to be a rain collector - a source of water, as promised.

_I’ll give you food_, he also said, and it became clear then how the forest loved Tenzou so. Branches bent low under the weight of their engorged fruits; bushes rustled as they parted and proudly presented their berries. Rhizomes and roots alike sprouted and slid out of the firm ground, into Tenzou's waiting hand.

How easy it had been for Iruka to forage for food back then. What a relief it had been, that they would not starve in their attempt to find civilisation. He was lucky, Iruka had thought - in his more prideful moments he thought himself capable.

It was a slap in the face now to see everything he had foraged in Tenzou's arms.

_And when you ripen I’ll take what I need_, Tenzou had promised last. The only promise left unfulfilled.

Iruka just had to escape before that.

* * *

He made his first escape attempt at the crack of dawn.

He made his second, third, and fourth attempts throughout the following day.

He thought it arrogance when Tenzou unwound the brambles from Iruka’s shoulders and let it slink away into the undergrowth. True, Tenzou had left a twist of thorns around his wrist, but that was an insufficient precaution when his legs were free to run. What would have been an insult was an advantage now.

He thought it an opportunity when Tenzou finally tired of Iruka’s furiously mute refusal to eat, to drink, to talk. Tenzou had offered him a drink from the pitcher, a fruit from a tree, words polite and encouraging, before he finally retreated across the clearing and settled down against a tree. An opportunity Iruka could not resist when dawn revealed his eyes to be closed, the rise and fall of his chest to be steady. 

Sleeping.

Iruka ran. 

Into the surrounding trees, back towards the wall of brambles. The brambles did not dig into his skin, a sure sign of Tenzou’s current state of unawareness. It only meant that he had to move faster, all too aware of the limited time he had before Tenzou realised his prisoner missing.

Except Tenzou had caught him. Iruka stopped to regain his bearings, coming to a stop on top of the tallest branch of a tree - the next moment Tenzou was there, an arm curling around Iruka’s waist and a hand holding Iruka’s unadorned wrist.

“Caught you,” he said into the curve of Iruka’s ear, sounding all too pleased.

Iruka’s kunai had been left behind at the wall. It didn’t stop him from attempting to assault Tenzou as he was brought back to the glade.

Again, again, and again - Iruka would wait for a moment’s worth of distraction. Iruka would make his escape. Iruka would run, run as far as he could without stopping, run until his lungs burned and his muscles screamed and his eyes blurred from the sweat that dripped into them - and the moment he stopped Tenzou would be there, sometimes following closely every step of the way, and sometimes appearing straight out of thin air and sweeping Iruka into his waiting arms.

Maybe it wasn't arrogance. But there was one last resort, in this forest full of trees.

He turned around and brought his hands up to form a _katon -_

The brambles around his wrist suddenly constricted, its thorns tearing sharply into his skin. He flinched, his hand spasming out of place for the proper seals; his chakra dissipated with the improper release. Blood oozed out of the wounds and down his fingers, dripping onto the ground; his hand throbbed. 

Tenzou was there a breath later. There was a pronounced stillness to his countenance, unsettling; the hairs on the back of Iruka’s neck prickled in response, warning.

He should run. Tenzou realised that Iruka had been about to burn down the forest. It would be natural for Tenzou to kill him for it - 

But where could he even run to? No, running was futile - it meant only being caught again. 

Tenzou stepped closer. He reached towards Iruka, his motion slow and measured. Iruka was only so brave; he flinched - 

As Tenzou closed his fingers around Iruka's bloody wrist. 

Iruka stayed frozen as Tenzou brought the wrist up to his mouth. The brambles withdrew into a looser circle, and that tongue flicked out against Iruka's skin, gentle and delicate; licking around the wounds the brambles left, drinking Iruka's blood.

And when Iruka's hand was clean, Tenzou pressed Iruka’s wrist to his lips one final time before looking Iruka in the eyes. 

“No jutsus,” he said clearly.

Iruka wasn’t sure if he nodded, or if his silence was sufficient. Either way, Tenzou smiled that empty smile and turned around, tugging Iruka back towards the glade. Under Tenzou's grip, the bramble around Iruka's wrist curled and shifted in place, the thorns pressing insistently against his skin even as they avoided his wounds. 

He was suddenly certain that if he tried to form a hand seal again, it might just _squeeze_ \- it might tear his hand off.

All of his escape attempts, had been little more than playtime to Tenzou. In that moment that Tenzou had been forebodingly silent, Iruka wondered if it was petulance - similar to a child's when their playmate broke a rule. 

He didn't know. He couldn't know, but he knew this at the very least: it was only Tenzou’s continued interest in Iruka that kept him alive.

There could be only be so many times Iruka could run before Tenzou would grow bored. Iruka couldn’t afford Tenzou growing bored. Not if he needed to escape.

A different approach was required.

* * *

To qualify for B-rank missions, Konoha required her ninja to undergo anti-interrogation training.

Information was the shinobi's currency. Konoha did not inform her ninja of the entirety of her plans, but her enemies did not need her to. Capture enough targets, or if they were particularly lucky the _right_ target, and it might just be enough to shine a light on plans and actions. An advantage taken away, a weakness exploited - neither was a possibility willingly suffered. 

Iruka had undergone such training under Tobitake Tonbo. _Every person has a breaking point_, Tonbo told him as he picked at a bowl of ramen. The scent wafted its merciless way under Iruka's attentive nose and sent hunger pangs straight into his starving stomach. No one, not the jounins or even the ANBU, could withstand torture indefinitely. Konoha only needed her ninjas to withstand until the usefulness of that information deprecated with time, and to know the various ways they will be encouraged to crack faster: the dread of impending torture, the promise of a reward, the actual pain.

But Tenzou didn’t want Konoha or her secrets. He wanted something smaller and less significant; something he did not need to resort to torture for. Save for the brambles, Tenzou had yet to raise a hand to Iruka; when they returned to the glade he presented again the fruit and water - both an unconditional offer.

How could he possibly apply his training to this situation? Tobitake himself probably didn’t foresee the need for training in the event of captivity under a monster.

It didn’t matter. _Information was the shinobi’s currency_, Iruka repeated to himself - it was what he lacked. Save for the barest of the abilities to control plants, Iruka had almost no information on Tenzou. He knew that Tenzou could heal himself, but not to what extent; he knew that Tenzou could move through the forest at speeds that defied logic, but he didn’t know how.

And despite everything, he didn’t know why Tenzou was still keeping him alive.

(What did ripening even mean?)

In hindsight, it had been a mistake to escape when he knew nothing of Tenzou the monster, having only known Tenzou the man. Did a monster need sleep, or had he been feigning all along? Did Tenzou need to eat, or did he go through the motions? 

Were there more out there? More monsters wearing human skins, enticing wayward travellers into their part of the woods. Was this world a far more dangerous place than Iruka had thought?

He didn’t know. He didn’t know, and he wouldn’t find out anything if he kept on running. But if he did what Tenzou wanted…

If he talked. A compromise instead of a surrender.

He fixed his eyes on Tenzou’s back, on the deceptively light grip around his wrist. And Iruka asked, “how did you catch up to me?”

Silence. They trudged onwards, with only the crunching of fallen leaves beneath their feet. Iruka faltered - maybe Tenzou guarded his own abilities just as jealously, lest his captive learnt how to outrun him.

But Tenzou eventually answered, “I followed you through the trees.”

“Through the trees.” Despite the moratorium on jutsu, _shunshin_ was apparently excluded if only to provide a greater challenge (or so Iruka suspected). Nevertheless, it should have been difficult for Tenzou to track him. Furthermore, Tenzou's movements were far from stealthy, even now - Iruka should have heard him coming. “You mean you just ran after me?”

Tenzou repeated, “I followed you through the trees."

_Anger at your students did not teach them any better_, Iruka reminded himself as he slowly breathed in and ignored all the times he managed to get through to Naruto _only_ because he got angry. _Anger at your captor was little more than a provocation_. “How did you follow me through the trees?"

Another silence, that Iruka hoped was more thoughtful than irritated. “I went through the trees.”

Something was getting lost in translation. He squeezed at the bridge of his nose with his free hand. It didn’t feel quite as satisfying when the hand he wanted to use was with Tenzou. 

“Could you show me,” he finally asked.

Tenzou stopped in his tracks; Iruka almost walked into him. His expression was unreadable when he turned around to consider Iruka. Unsure of what he was looking for, Iruka met his gaze steadily.

“I won’t run.” That was reasonable. “I promise."

That blank expression slipped into a slightest hint of a frown. 

“I can’t bring you along,” Tenzou said. It sounded almost tentative. 

Iruka shook his head. “That’s alright. I just want to see."

Tenzou stared at him for a few seconds more before bringing a hand up to rest against a nearby tree. It sunk into the bark, disappearing up to Tenzou's elbow. Skin, fabric, both melded seamlessly into wood. 

“Look behind you,” Tenzou said. 

Iruka looked. A hand stuck out of a tree a few paces away. Absurdly, it waved at him before retracting into the bark. He turned around, mechanically, to see Tenzou pulling his hand away from the first tree - no trace of a hole, a mark, _anything_. 

“You,” he said. Tenzou waited, patient. “Why did you - why'd you let me run?”

“I like the chase,” came the plain answer. Iruka stared blankly at him. “I like chasing you.”

He smiled at Iruka, eyes glinting, before turning around and continuing the trek back to the glade. Iruka followed behind him, mute in his revelations. 

Running had been futile after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kind thanks to each and every one of you that left me a comment. <3 this is dedicated to all of you.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a (small) halloween update!!! one full year after i wanted to start this fic lmfao
> 
> have more horror stories shenanigans. things ought to get going next chapter. when i get around to writing it, hah.
> 
> thanks to everyone who sticks around on this weird little story on this rarepair!!!!

Over the next few days, Iruka clung onto the hope (the lie) that he would be able to escape. He pressed Tenzou for information on himself, which Tenzou gave willingly: that he was a tree that gained sentience, that he required water and sunlight to survive, and nutrients to grow. That the best nutrients were flesh and blood, and that they tasted best, too.

“What happens if lightning strikes that first tree,” Iruka posited in a blunt attempt to discover whether incinerating the original tree out of which Tenzou emerged was sufficient to end all this. “If it strikes you?”

“Then that part of me would burn but I will survive,” Tenzou answered matter-of-factly. “I am more than one tree. I have lost a few to the lightning storms, and more to disease. But I remain.”

A hundred years, and more. Iruka could not imagine living that long. But he had not imagined a plant monster, either. 

“Are there others like you,” he asked in another conversation. "Other trees and plants that gained sentience.” 

Tenzou shrugged. “Perhaps,” he allowed. “I haven’t met them.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t leave the boundaries of my forest,” Tenzou said openly. The sole piece of good news, even if Iruka figured that it would be so. Otherwise Tenzou would have let him escape past that wall of brambles, only to cruelly drag Iruka back from what he thought was safety. “I can only go so far as my roots reach.”

“What about other monsters?” What else lived for a hundred years? “Animals? Rivers? Rocks?"

“A couple, maybe more.” Tenzou's eyes seemed darker, even in the brightness of day. “Monsters, humans, animals - I’ve hunted them all. Everything makes good nutrients, in the end.”

“Even me,” Iruka asserted, meeting Tenzou’s gaze.

“Even you.” Tenzou curled his hand around Iruka’s palm - it had been easier to let him hold it, rather than repeatedly yank it out of his grasp. Easier to let him sleep next to Iruka - even when Iruka rolled away in the middle of the night, Tenzou would be next to him in the morning. Lying down next to him, or combing gentle fingers through his hair. He would have thought Tenzou attracted to him, but he hadn’t tried that awful kiss again, nor had he declared anything of the sort. 

Did plants even feel attraction?

“You’re the first I’ve wanted to keep around,” Tenzou admitted easily. As though Iruka should be honoured by this dubious privilege.

Iruka scoffed. “I’m not very nutritious alive, am I?"

“No.” An answering hum. “But I’ll be fine with just you ripening.”

Ripening, again. It was the sole subject that Tenzou was truly evasive about, with the only answer Iruka received being a cryptic ‘_you’ll see_’. 

"Maybe there'll be other humans you'll be interested in keeping around.” Iruka eventually suggested, even if half-heartedly. It would be fortunate if Tenzou focused his… attention on someone else, but Iruka was more likely to end up dead instead of being allowed to leave with a pleasant goodbye. Can’t waste nutrients and all. "You won't know unless you stop eating them."

"I've talked to some of them. They scream most of the time."

"Trying to kill them might make for a terrible conversation partner,” Iruka pointed out dryly.

Tenzou’s face twitched towards a scowl. 

"I approached them the same way I approached you,” he said mulishly. A sore reminder that Iruka really should have been more suspicious of a civilian wandering around a forest. “If I killed them immediately it wouldn’t be interesting.”

_Interesting_ \- “Killing isn’t meant to be interesting!” Iruka snapped, entirely forgetting himself in front of a murderous plant monster. 

“Why not?” Tenzou tilted his head. “What is it supposed to be then?”

Necessary. Out of self-defence and out of service. Something swift and immediate, painless if possible - not the drawn out torture Tenzou was subjecting his prey to if this entire forest was any indication. 

“It’s supposed to be a last resort,” Iruka bit out. “It’s for a purpose.”

“But I need to grow.” The stillness of Tenzou’s form then, the lack of the rise and fall of his chest, really drove home how _other_ Tenzou truly was. “Isn’t that enough of a purpose?”

“Of course not.” If Tenzou did not have compassion, then Iruka doubted he would understand morality. So instead, he asked, “why do you need to grow?”

There was the flicker of uncertainty behind the blankness of Tenzou’s eyes - no. Iruka really had to stop putting emotions to a being that barely had any beyond hunger and want, emotions he himself wanted to see in them. He’d only end up disappointed in the end.

So he looked stoically on at Tenzou’s still form. He remembered how his students fidgeted in class as their attention wandered, how in the lull of activity during his mission desk shifts there was always someone shifting, someone scratching, someone sighing, never silent. How even the stillest of guards blinked, every once in a while. 

There was none of that in Tenzou, as frozen as he was when he was lost in thought. A statue carved out of polished wood.

“I need to grow so I can acquire more sustenance,” Tenzou answered slowly. 

"But you have to acquire more so that you can grow." Iruka finished. "Isn't... isn't your size enough?"

"Enough?" 

"Yeah, enough." Iruka gestured at the trees surrounding them - at Tenzou, technically. "You're not a small forest."

"No, I am not," Tenzou agreed. If it had been anyone else, Iruka would have taken it as a point of pride rather than the statement of fact it was. 

So he barrelled on, "you only really need, what, sunlight and rain? You don't actually need to kill to thrive, do you?"

"I don't," Tenzou agreed again. "But neither do you."

Iruka blinked. "I don't - "

"You don't kill for things you don't need?" He parroted back to Iruka,"you only need, what, plants and water? You don't actually need to kill to thrive, do you?"

Iruka wasn't so foolish to think humans any better than the animals he ate, at least in Tenzou's eyes. And he wasn't so blinded by the brightness of the Will of Fire to claim that his leaders were ever flawless, to ignore how it could be used to scour the face of the earth and leave nothing but desolation behind. 

"No, I don't," he bit out. 

The worst part of it was that Tenzou didn't even look smug about his concession. 

"But you... you don't kill easily," he mused instead. "Why do you kill, when you do?"

It was the first time Tenzou asked him a question, after the deception had been revealed. Iruka had expected it sooner, for all the questions he peppered the monster with - it was inevitable that Tenzou would have questions of his own. 

But whether to answer them... 

_Rapports go two ways, Umino_, Tobitake's voice echoed, tinny and distant. _Be careful when you build one_.

(The only way out is through.)

"To protect my village," he finally said. What better reason could there be? "To protect the people important to me."

"To protect your own," Tenzou echoed. "I'm protecting my own, too. Some humans have told me that they'd have cut me down for kindling to sell." His smile was dark, and Iruka had no doubt who had been cut down first. "So tell me, why am I any different?"

"Because we don't go chasing intruders in our territory and call it fun," Iruka snapped. At least he himself had never done so - he could not speak for the more violent of his peers, those who would look at another person not from their village and see them as lesser. There were such people, he knew. "We don't draw it out just for our own amusement."

Before Tenzou could lead him round in another circle, much like how he led Iruka around his forest, dizzying and confounding his senses, Iruka pressed on.

"Necessity means doing it quickly. Getting the job done." He met Tenzou's eyes squarely, those fathomless black depths. "Not playing with your food."

In that split-second after his declaration, Iruka imagined Tenzou's reaction. Another attempt to twist Iruka's words, or perhaps a nonchalant observation on how a drawn-out chase was beneficial to a forest monster. Or perhaps the insistence on how the chase was fun, like a child finding entertainment in plucking the wings off flies. 

But he could not have predicted that Tenzou would lean in, and place a hand on his face. Tenzou's fingers splayed wide over his cheekbone, the hollow space of his cheek, nudging up against the side of his nose. As though he just wanted to touch, to press his palm against skin, to look for something in Iruka's face. 

For a being made out of wood, Tenzou was surprisingly warm. 

"You're more than food to me," he finally murmured. 

Iruka jerked backwards, instinctive. Tenzou let him, his hand retreating back to his body - the approximation of a human body, Iruka valiantly attempted to remind himself. That whatever was talking to him right now only took a form that was familiar to him, that was false. 

"One day," Iruka accused, across his own unsteady breathing. "That's all I will be."

"One day," Tenzou agreed placidly. "Though not yet."

After all, Iruka had yet to ripen. 

* * *

Iruka dreamt. 

He dreamt of Tenzou stepping towards him, of him placing his hand on Iruka’s face. His touch was feverish, burning hot; Iruka shivered. 

Tenzou leant in, placing his mouth against the shell of Iruka's ear. 

"You've ripened," he said, audibly pleased. 

His hand slid away from Iruka's face and around his neck, pulling Iruka into an embrace. His grip, as light as it was, did not yield as Iruka pulled away from him, as Iruka began thrashing against him. With every desperate blow Iruka attempted to land on him, the skin beneath cracked like porcelain - the facade, revealed. 

Iruka's efforts renewed, energised by the idea of a weakness, a vulnerability, the possibility of freedom -

No. Not like porcelain. 

Like the rough bark of a tree. 

And that was what Tenzou had become, a tree twisted around Iruka in a parody of an embrace, now encasing him on all sides, rendering him immobile. His feet sank down, into the warmth of the loamy soil; something sliced at their soles.

And then there was the pull of something intent, something hungrier. Something that once had the form of Tenzou. It pulled, through his lacerated feet from the very ends of his hair - and Iruka could only watch as his skin took on that same grainy texture, as his fingers refused to bend. As his vocal cords refused to flex even as air passed through them. 

As he could no longer distinguish between the tree that trapped him and himself. 

* * *

Iruka did not wake up screaming, but he woke up all the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note to self: never argue ethics with a monster
> 
> a few second later: *scratches note out*


End file.
